Beware of the Inner Voices

What are the voices in our heads telling us that keep holding us back, limiting us, stifling our potential, and keeping us from being content with our lives? More importantly, why do we give birth to these voices by allowing them to come out of our mouths forming the chains that keep us from becoming the best versions of ourselves. The way I see it, these voices fall into four categories, voices of self doubt, voices eager to please others, voices of the past and voices of the future.

I have observed these types of behaviors in people from all walks of life, from professionals at work to children playing at the park. Quite frankly, these voices sometimes sneak into my own head, and I find myself having to knock them into oblivion before giving them life.

Voices of Self-doubt

What are the voices in our heads that feed self-doubt? Let’s start with ”I’m not good enough! How about “I don’t have what it takes;” “it’s not my thing!;” “I’m not smart enough” I’m not creative; “I’m too shy” or a few new ones I have heard kids say lately like, “I’m trash!!!” or “I suck!!!” These are powerful words. Where do these voices come from? Who placed them in our heads? Was it our parents, teachers, social media, television, or friends? More importantly, who allows them to get into our heads to begin with?

Voices Eager to Please Others

Guilty as charged! I’m a problem solver; that’s just what I do. The voices in my head push me to solve other peoples’ problems, even if it’s emotionally taxing or time consuming. There are times when our plates are full and other times when there’s some room to dedicate the attention, energy and passion required to solve people’s problems. In other cases, it’s simply not our responsibility to solve them, not out of selfishness or because we’re ill-equipped, but because we need to allow others to figure out their own issues and solve their own problems. This is just part of life’s journey, where challenges come our way to test us, teach us lessons and help us grow. However, we fall into the trap of helping solve other people’s problems just to please them, no matter the cost.

We sometimes try to please others by living up to their expectations. We have to handle this carefully, because living up to others’ high standards and expectations can be a good thing, but only if we have made a conscious decision to choose those people as role models, mentors, or coaches, because they have positive qualities that we want to emulate to help be better professionally, physically (health-not simply appearance), spiritually, and intellectually or just better human beings.

We try to live up to others’ dreams, not our own. Parents, including me at times, sometimes impose our own unfulfilled dreams on our children, even when they clearly have no passion or desire to pursue parents’ dreams. Chasing someone else’s dreams without owning them and being fueled by genuine passion is simply “sad”.

Voices of our Past

Most of us have stumbled along the way as we navigate this journey called life. Whether we have failed at some point or many points of our lives, professionally or personally, we just cannot allow ourselves to be choked or paralyzed by the thoughts or memories of our past missteps.

In a previous blog, I mentioned that sometimes we fail to fully enjoy the present or fail to move forward because we are so busy staring at the rearview mirror or living in our previous destination, relationship, or childhood experiences. Our past is our past, the memories should be looked upon fondly, but lessons from previous failures, stumbles and missteps are what we need to focus on and use them to have a better today and create a brighter tomorrow. Don’t allow these voices of the past to choke you, and quit giving them life by talking about them. Instead give birth and rebirth to the positive lessons learned from them.

Voices of the Future

Now I am the first one to admit to have fallen victim and sometimes continue to fall victim to voices of the future that is worrisome voices about what’s next, even if they are only in my head. The voices sound something like this, what if I don’t get promoted? What if I underperform? I don’t know if I’m ready for this. I don’t know if I have what it takes. What if I fail? What if I look stupid? These voices make us anxious and, worried; they are distracting us from being fully in the moment making today count so we don’t have any regrets tomorrow.

I am not saying that we are weak or that there’s something wrong with us or unnatural because we have these voices. We all have them.  But IF WE ALLOW THEM, they can slow our progress and we can even become paralyzed by giving them greater power when we verbalizing them, or even worse, act upon them. We must recognize, admit and accept the existence of these voices, ponder on them and think about what we can do to liberate ourselves from their grasp so we can unleash our true potential.

I invite you to interact with me a little. I hope you ponder and reflect on these words, as I too will contemplate on the thoughts and voices to which we give life. Maybe together we can figure out how we can prevent these voices from keeping us from becoming the best we can be.

Can you relate to these voices?

How many of you have difficulty controlling these voices?

What can we do to stop giving them life?